Tup wasn't as naive as many of his brothers thought he was. He was hopeful, and sometimes he let that hope cloud his judgement, but when things went wrong he didn't just look stubbornly the other way and refuse to see it. Despite what many of the other clones seemed to imply, Tup had been trained to be a soldier. He fought his battles head-on, just like the rest of them.
Tup knew that being reunited with Dogma wouldn't immediately fix anything. His vod was still going to live and serve with the guard. He was probably still going to feel ostracized by the 501st, and despite Hardcase and Jesse's best efforts Tup didn't think that was ever going to change. They'd lost their chance with him.
Dogma was still going to have shutdowns, clearly, and Tup wouldn't always be here to help pick up the pieces. But he was here now, and that was what mattered. It was like being allowed onto a battlefield that he'd been grounded from. The battle had just started, but at least Tup could help his brother fight through it.
Things weren't fine yet, but it was going to be, because Tup wouldn't rest until it was. He'd let his grief get the best of him and he'd allowed Dogma to slip through his fingers before either of them were truly prepared for it. He wasn't going to make that mistake again. When Tup eventually returned to the 501st, he would be leaving Dogma with the promise that he still cared about him, a vow that he would call him at the very least once a week, and he would personally see to it that the guards knew how to take care of Dogma and give him what he needed.
Tup sat with Dogma in the guards' medbay, just letting his vod braid his hair. The guard's medic was catching Tup up on how Dogma had been for the past week, grilling him for any bit of advice on how to help Dogma should this happen in the future. Gamma seemed relieved that this only happened when Dogma had to give a capital D Demonstration. But that just raised a question for Tup that he'd never been able to get a straight answer for.
"What, exactly, is a Demonstration?" Tup asked. Dogma stiffened and slowed in his brushing of Tup's hair. Tup hummed slightly and leaned into his touch. He knew how to get Dogma to relax when he was on the brink of falling to pieces.
"It's exactly what it sounds like." Gamma said. "When the senators, or apparently the Jedi or Kaminoans, want to bring in new investors, they give demonstrations of what exactly they're investing in. Weapons. Fighting strategies. Armor upgrades. But those of us in the guard know that they just use it as an excuse to torture us and make it evident that we're expandable."
Dogma made an odd sound that Tup knew meant that he wanted to disagree, but felt that he couldn't for one reason or another. Whether he couldn't because he knew his argument would go nowhere, or because he knew the other person was right but he was too far in denial to even begin to wrap his head around it, he just couldn't argue. Tup hated when Dogma got like this. He wanted to hear his brother's opinions. Even if he didn't agree with his brother all the time, he still felt like Dogma had the right to have his opinions, and he had the right to be heard.
"Do you think there's more to the Demonstrations than that?" Tup asked, his voice far calmer than the twisting in his stomach might suggest. "Do you think we're not expandable? That the senators and Jedi see us as more than that?" The odd thing was, Tup didn't actually know what Dogma's opinion on the matter was, because he'd heard his brother argue it both ways. Dogma would insist with every fiber of his being that they mattered to the Republic, and it wasn't possible for them to be betrayed by the system they'd been created for. But Dogma also said that their own personal feelings and safety didn't matter, because they were born to serve the Republic above everything else, but so were countless other clones.
Dogma's mouth twitched. "...No. They don't. We were created to be expandable. That's our very purpose. We live to die." Dogma's voice was closed off and cold, and Tup realized that he wasn't just disillusioned to the Republic after what happened, or trying to dehumanize the clones. This particular tone of Dogma's was what he used when he was repeating what the Kaminoans had drilled into him.
Tup turned to look at his brother. Dogma's eyes widened when Tup's hair was pulled out of his reach. He already looked overwhelmed, and Tup felt bad for being the source of this, but he needed to look at Dogma. He needed to make sure that he understood Dogma perfectly.
"Vod, did the Kaminoans tell you we were expendable?" Tup asked. "Did they say you were expendable?"
"Of course." Dogma said, as though it was obvious. "That…that was one of the first lessons I learned."
"But did they teach you, or did you learn it?" Tup asked somewhat urgently. Dogma blinked, his gaze glazing over ever so slightly.
"That's…I don't know what you mean." Dogma said. "It's the same thing."
"No, no, I see what you're saying." Gamma said. He crossed his arms. "Dogma, did the Kaminoans actually use the word expendable? Or did you just pick up their meaning through context?"
"Both." Dogma looked from Tup to Gamma. "Why does everybody ask me about what I learned on Kamino. W-we all were trained on Kamino. We were all taught the same thing."
Tup took Dogma's hands. "D'ika, I was never told I was expendable." Dogma narrowed his eyes and opened his mouth to argue, probably to say something along the lines of suggesting that Tup had just forgotten the specifics of what he was taught, even though clones never did. Tup didn't let him get that far.
"Dogma, listen to me." Tup squeezed his vod's hands. "You know me. You know me better than anybody else. You know that if I was ever told by the Kaminoans that any of us were expendable, I would have cried about it for weeks. I didn't, because I wasn't."
Dogma blinked rapidly. Tup could practically see him trying to put all the pieces together, but the pieces that were supposed to fit perfectly didn't fit quite right. The puzzle that was Dogma's mind had been meddled with too much, and the pieces that should finish the whole picture just wouldn't fit in the holes anymore.
"But…But I was." Dogma said. "I did the Demonstrations…but you never did." Dogma's hands were shaking. "Fox said the Kaminoans never talked to him about why it was inappropriate for clones to have attachments with each other, but I was. I have the notes from when I learned that lesson three different times. Did…did they teach you about it? Even just once?"
Dogma sounded scared and desperate. He wanted to understand. He wanted to know that he wasn't completely alone. Tup wished he could tell him what he wanted to hear, but he searched his memories and couldn't think of a single instance where the Kaminoans had tried to even imply that clones shouldn't be close to each other. He'd heard rumors that some of the very first batches had been taught something like that, but the Kaminoans had quickly realized that clones latched onto each other, and they couldn't be forced to stop.
"I'm sorry, Dogma." Tup said. "They didn't."
Dogma's face fell. He looked so vulnerable and young. It was a reminder to Tup of just how young both of them were, and Dogma had never been given the chance to actually be young. He'd tried so hard to show how strong and capable he was, even when they had just been cadets.
All of them had been desperate to prove themselves as cadets, but Dogma's desperation had felt different somehow. He didn't just want to show that he was ready for the war they'd been created for, he had almost seemed afraid of failing. Tup had tried asking Dogma what the consequences would be if he really did fail, but his explanations hadn't made sense.
Tup couldn't remember what exactly Dogma had said, but he remembered that while he had understood the words he'd said, they didn't make sense in the context of what had been asked. A part of Tup wanted to ask Dogma again why he was afraid of being seen as a failure in the Kaminoans eyes, but he knew his vod was in too fragile a state of mind right now. Asking him now might make him shut down. If not, it would at the very least frighten and overwhelm him, and Tup didn't want to do that.
"I-It doesn't make sense." Dogma said, using that tone of voice that meant that he was slipping into denial of something that he knew was probably true. It was a tone he adopted often when he argued with Jesse and Fives about their more innocent rule-breaking that didn't really hurt anybody. "The Kaminoans train everyone the same. I-I had some extra classes, but I was still just taught the same thing as everybody else."
Gamma frowned. "Were you failing your lessons?"
"No, of course not." Dogma sounded offended. "I was always top of my class."
"So why did you need extra lessons to teach you the same things you were already learning?" Gamma asked. He was asking the question that Tup felt like a fool for not asking years ago. Dogma had always been what the Kaminoans considered to be a perfect example of a cadet. He remembered all the rules, followed them to a T, even if it ended up getting him hurt. He only asked appropriate questions at appropriate times, and he would impatiently answer any questions that other cadets who hadn't been paying attention might have, because Dogma hadn't thought that the Kaminoans should waste their time reteaching something they'd already taught.
If Dogma had been such a great cadet, why had he been given the extra attention?
"I…the Kaminoans were impressed with my dedication." Dogma said. He sounded like he was trying to convince himself. "They knew I could handle more."
"More?" Tup couldn't help but ask. "I thought you said the Kaminoans taught you the same thing that they taught everybody else."
"...They did?" Dogma just sounded confused. Tup wished he could understand what his brother had gone through, but it was clear that Dogma didn't even understand it, and asking him about it was just making him question everything.
"Why don't we go get some fresh air?" Tup suggested. Dogma just looked lost. Tup got off the bed and pulled Dogma up. His vod followed him numbly. Gamma didn't say a word when Tup started to lead Dogma away from the medbay. He was busy writing something down. Gamma was probably trying to make sense of the mystery that was Dogma.
Tup wished him luck. He'd been trying to solve this particular mystery for years, and he felt no closer to understanding his vod now than he did when they first met.
"I'm sorry." Tup said as they walked down the halls. "I think Coruscant can be good for you, but I should never have let you go without a fight."
"There wasn't anything you could have done." Dogma said. "You can't fight a reassignment."
"Oh yes I can." Tup scowled. "Fives did." Jesse had told him everything, about how Rex had planned on transferring Hardcase, but Fives had talked him out of it and put Dogma under the chopping block instead. Tup could empathize with Fives' fear of losing a vod so soon after losing his twin, but he was never going to forgive him for what he did to Dogma.
Tup had understood why Fives couldn't stand to let himself be close to Dogma, even if he didn't like it. He could even forgive Fives suggesting that Dogma would do better with the Coruscant Guard, because it was clear that he was. What was inexcusable was that Fives suggested that nobody cared about Dogma. That he wouldn't be missed.
He was Tup's vod. He was Hardcase's vod'ika, even if they hadn't put the words to it yet. Jesse was trying to make amends, and Kix had pulled some major strings to make that possible. Torrent cared about Dogma, whether Fives knew it or not, and Tup knew they weren't going to leave Coruscant until Dogma understood that he was, in fact, missed.
Tup squeezed Dogma's hand. "If you wanted to come back to the 501st, I'd make it happen." Tup said. He'd fight anybody that tried to fight him on it. "Or if you wanted me to come to Coruscant, I'd get a transfer here and now."
Dogma gave him a small smile. "I-I like it here. It's hard, but I feel like I fit in here." Dogma's eyes were sad, but he was still smiling. "While I would love to have you here with me, you belong with Torrent. You always have." And Tup knew he was right. He'd felt at home with Torrent from the second he'd joined them. He just hated that his brother didn't feel the same.
"I'll call you." Tup promised. "I'll call you so often that you're going to be begging for space from me." Dogma laughed, and it was a rare sound that Tup rarely ever heard. His heart warmed at the sound.
"That's not going to happen." Dogma said.
"And I'll visit you every leave." Tup said. "I know that you won't have a break just because I do, and maybe going out for drinks would be too much to ask, but I can at least visit when your shift is over."
"Fox would probably give me a shift off if he knew you were here to see me." Dogma said. Tup beamed at him, and Dogma just looked confused. "What?"
"You called him Fox." Tup said. "I don't think I've ever heard you refer to a Commander without their title."
Dogma's face went just a little red. "I guess things changed." Tup hadn't expected Dogma to become more lenient on his personal rules and structures for himself, let alone for it to happen while he worked on Coruscant, but Tup couldn't be happier about it. Dogma deserved to let himself relax.
And the fact that Dogma wasn't frantically trying to correct or explain himself when Tup pointed out that he was technically disrespecting his Commander by not addressing him appropriately, it said a lot about just how safe Dogma truly felt here. He had changed so much that he wasn't fighting it, at least on this matter.
"So, Fox is a good Commander for you?" Tup asked.
"He's more than that." Dogma said. He started going on and on about the accommodations that Fox made for him, all without breaking the rules. Tup could tell that he admired Fox and appreciated him, and it was clear that the Commander was treating Dogma with the care that he so deserved and needed.
"It sounds like Fox really cares about you." Tup said.
"He does." Dogma said. "Buir has even helped me figure out how to show I care. He makes me feel like a bit less of a failure of a brother."
Tup didn't miss the term that Dogma used for Fox. He didn't call it out this time, because he knew that Dogma really would get defensive. If Dogma felt safe enough to call his Commander that, then he really was good here.
"You've never been a failure of a brother." Tup said. Dogma didn't see just how much he did for Tup. He seemed oblivious of the way that he had let Tup curl up in his bed with him when he couldn't sleep, or the times that Tup was being picked on and Dogma would purposefully bring up the rules and regulations, just to bring their ire onto him so they would leave Tup alone.
Dogma cared so much, even if he was scared to. It had always been good enough for Tup. He wished his brother could see how good he was, and he was eternally grateful to Fox for helping Dogma to see the truth.
Dogma gave him a very brief tour of the guards' barracks, telling him all sorts of tidbits and 'fun facts'. Tup didn't personally think that Dogma having a closet to consider his personal space was a 'fun fact', but it made his brother happy, which meant that it made Tup happy. Their tour ended in the barracks, where Tup could see Jesse and Hardcase talking in hushed voices to Fox and another clone.
Dogma froze, stopping in the middle of what he was saying. He was looking towards the group, a distant look in his eyes. Tup was scared for a moment that he had lost his brother.
"Dogma?" Tup squeezed his hand. He remembered Jesse saying that Dogma had frozen up and seemed scared when he'd seen him and Fives. Was that what was happening now? Was he really that scared of Torrent?
Dogma moved as suddenly as he had frozen. He ran towards the bed. Tup lurched forward, worried that Dogma was going to be hitting their brothers, but he stopped himself when he saw Dogma move straight past Jesse and Hardcase, instead embracing the clone sitting on the bed.
Dogma was completely distraught. Tup didn't think he had ever seen his vod like this. He cautiously went closer, and he heard Dogma muttering apology after apology as he clung to the other clone. The clone held on to him just as tightly. Fox watched the two of them cautiously, like he expected something to go wrong at any second. Tup just felt lost.
"What are you apologizing for?" Fox asked slowly.
Dogma stiffened and slowly pulled away from the other clone. He looked at him, and then at Fox, and then he looked at Tup. "I-I don't know." Dogma sounded confused. "I did…I sh-sho…" Dogma's voice shook and trailed off. His eyes were completely closed off. Tup realized what was happening. Dogma sometimes got like this just after a Demonstration, when he was still in the process of forgetting the incident to protect his mind.
"Hey, hey, it's okay." Fox said quickly. "You don't have to remember. You're okay. Thire's okay. That's all that matters."
"I'm fine, vod'ika." Thire insisted. "You scared me, you know."
"Sorry." Dogma muttered.
"You really did forget." Jesse said, more to himself than anything. Dogma stiffened and looked at Jesse with wide eyes, like he hadn't realized he was even there before.
"Jesse?" Dogma's gaze shifted over. "Hardcase. What are you guys doing here?"
"We were worried about you." Hardcase said. "And I wanted the chance to say a proper goodbye."
Jesse's mouth thinned. "I was unfair to you before you left. I'm sorry."
Dogma stared at Jesse, trying to read him. Tup held his breath. He knew that Dogma wasn't a forgiving person by nature. He had been hurt too many times to let people in. But Dogma knew that Jesse didn't easily admit when he was wrong, and he didn't apologize unless he meant it.
"It's okay." Dogma eventually said slowly. "I might have overreacted that day." Tup didn't know what happened between the two of them. They weren't going into specifics. It was clear that both Jesse and Dogma just wanted to move on without really addressing what happened. Tup didn't know if that would work, but it might, and couldn't intervene. Jesse and Dogma wouldn't build a relationship if someone was holding their hand the whole way. They needed to do things on their own.
"What are you guys talking about?" Tup asked, moving the conversation away from awkward, somewhat unnatural and forced reconciliation. He had been thinking it would just be along the lines of finding some common ground between the guard and the GAR, and about time too. For some reason though Fox looked guilty, Jesse looked uncomfortable, and they both sent Hardcase a warning look, which he was oblivious to.
"We're trying to figure out how the long-necks reconditioned you without you knowing." Hardcase said without a care in the world. Jesse sighed and Fox grimaced. Tup stiffened and cast a concerned look at his brother, because while there were a lot of things that could set Dogma off, none hit him as hard as the implication that he'd been reconditioned.
Sure enough, Dogma had gone stiff as a board and his eyes had gone hard and cold, almost vacant.
"I wasn't reconditioned." Dogma hissed tensely. He sounded almost angry, but Tup knew his vod. He knew this was just a mask, and that he was going to break down as soon as he thought it was safe to do so. "I'm not a broken, malfunctioning meat-droid whose wires got rearranged."
"We never said you were." Fox said. Dogma's mouth was pressed into a thin line as he pointed at Jesse, not even looking at him.
"He has." Dogma said. "He thinks there's something wrong with me, and he thinks it's funny."
"I've never thought it was funny." Jesse said. Dogma's eye twitched.
"But you think there's something wrong with me." Dogma said. It wasn't a question. Jesse grimaced, but he didn't refute it. Tup felt a little bad for him. He knew that Jesse meant will. He did think that Dogma had something fundamentally wrong with him, but so did Tup. The Kaminoans had done something to him. But for a clone to be told they're wrong or flawed, that they were just an imperfect byproduct of the Kaminoans cloning process, was a painful thing for any of them to consider.
Dogma swallowed thickly as he stepped away from the four of them. Thire and Fox both reached for Dogma, but he ducked out of both of their reach.
"There's nothing wrong with me." Dogma's voice shook, but it still sounded emotionless. "I didn't need to be fixed before. I don't need to be fixed now. I'm a good soldier."
"Of course you're a good soldier." Tup put a hand on Dogma's shoulder. His vod jumped at the contact, but didn't pull away. "We all know you're a good soldier."
"There's nothing wrong with me." Dogma just repeated.
Tup considered his words carefully. "You've done nothing wrong." Tup said slowly. "But I-I think something was wrong with your training. It was…different. We're just trying to figure out how your training was different so we can figure out how to help you."
"I don't need to be fixed." Dogma insisted.
"But I think you do need help." Tup said. "Like…like how Hardcase needs help to focus sometimes. Or how I need help to sleep when I have a nightmare."
"You're always jumping at the chance to help your brothers." Fox said. "When they can't handle their shift, you don't blame them for not being strong enough to do their job. You just help them, because you know they don't have to be strong all the time. We've talked about you accepting help. Let us give it to you."
Dogma blinked. "I wasn't reconditioned, but…I don't know."
Tup took Dogma's hands and held them tightly. He leaned his forehead against Dogma's, feeling something inside of him both ease and break at the way that his vod let out a shuddered breath and leaned in to his touch.
"It's okay." Tup said. It's okay if you don't know. That's why we're here. We can help you figure things out. But we need you to let us." Dogma's face fell and closed his eyes tightly with a very quiet whimper. Tup rubbed the back of Dogma's head, because he knew he found comfort in his hair being touched, and he wanted to provide that same touch. If Dogma flinched away from him, he would stop, but his vod accepted it.
"I know it's a lot to ask." Tup said quietly, just loud enough for Dogma to hear. Nobody else needed to hear this. "It seems so deceptively simple to let go, but it's so hard. But you can't do this anymore. Not by yourself. But you don't have to. I want to help you. Fox, Hardcase, Jesse, Kix, Thire, we all just want to help us. But the hardest job is yours. Can you do it? Can you let us in?"
Dogma sighed. "You won't leave me? No matter what?" Dogma opened his eyes and looked at him. "I don't mean literally, I just-"
"I know what you mean." Tup said. Dogma was just asking for his support, whether Tup was here on Coruscant, or when he was with the 501st. And he would do it. "I'm here for you, no matter what."
Dogma's body seemed to lose all of its tension as he leaned against Tup, who quickly wrapped his arms around him. He felt Dogma nod, and Tup couldn't remember if he had ever been more relieved. He kissed Dogma's forehead and gave him a very small nuzzle.
"I'm not broken." Dogma muttered. "I can't be fixed if I'm not broken." And Tup understood what he meant. Dogma was scared. He didn't want people to go to all this effort to fix him, because what if nothing changed? Would they give up on him and decide he was a lost cause? Would they try to change him in the name of 'fixing' who he was?
"You're not broken." Tup said, because Dogma really needed to hear those words from someone else. "But we're going to help you anyway. I promise."